Last week I posted the first part of my interview with biographer Carole Angier, co-author of the excellent new publication The Arvon Book of Life Writing. You can read the story of how I came to meet Carole by going to Part 1.

INTERVIEW WITH CAROLE ANGIER: Part 2

Fiona: So – continuing where we left off…

Q5. In Clare Mulley’s contribution to your book she writes very entertainingly about her journey as Eglantyne Jebb’s biographer (The Woman who Saved the Children, One World). Can you single out some of the highs and lows when you were writing each of your biographies on Jean Rhys and Primo Levi.

Carole:  There were so many lows! On Jean Rhys I remember a moment when I felt very low for her: when her only surviving relative told me that the family was so embarrassed by Jean’s books, they kept them in brown paper wrappers.

I think my highest moment on Jean Rhys was when I discovered the identity of her great love, the model for Walter in Voyage in the Dark (and for Neil James in After Leaving Mr Mackenzie – and, I argue, for Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea.) All I knew was that he had been a stock-broker, like Walter; and all I had was one brief note she’d kept, starting ‘Dear Kitten’, and signed ‘Lancey’. Because of that ‘Kitten’, I guessed that ‘Lancey’ was Jean’s pet name for him, her knight in shining armour. The letter paper had only a telephone number embossed on top. But by searching through the stock-brokers of 1911, I found it: Rowe & Pitman, a very pukka old firm, stock brokers to the Queen. There I stuck for a while: if all I had was a pet name, how could I ever find him? Then, on the third or fourth hopeless gazing at the Rowe & Pitman directors, I saw it: Lancelot Hugh Smith, halfway down the list. Could it be – ? Could ‘Lancey’ have been his real name? Jean’s executor, Francis Wyndham, had told me that she often talked of Lancey’s beautiful house on Charles Street, near Berkeley Square. So I got out a pre-World War I Kelly’s Street Directory – one of the biographer’s trustiest tools – and turned to Charles Street, Berkeley Square. And there he was: Lancelot Grey Hugh Smith, at No 30.

I wanted to shout with joy – but I was in the Bodleian Library, where shouting had been forbidden for centuries. So I buried my head in my arms and shouted soundlessly into the table.

Carole's biography of Primo Levi

On Primo Levi there was a moment that started high, but ended seriously low.

I had known for a long time that Levi’s marriage was a sort of prison. This was important, because prison was a major theme of his life, and of my book; and also because the trouble in his marriage was both a cause and an effect of his depression.

Everybody in Turin knew this, and everybody told me in roundabout ways, but no one would come right out with it, or be quoted. Then one day I went to talk to a friend of Levi’s – one of those distinguished intellectuals, with whom I was expecting to have an intellectual conversation. Instead he launched into a passionate diatribe against Levi’s wife and mother, and a moving description of Levi, driven to suicide by these incubi. I didn’t believe every word, but much of it confirmed things I already knew. I went home racked with pity for Levi, but jubilant to have such eloquent quotes for my book.

The next morning he rang and asked me to come around immediately. When I got there he said: “What I told you yesterday was a mistake. If you attribute anything of the sort to me, I shall be forced to deny it. Good day.”

Q6. On p223-4 the advice on writing dialogue in biography (and memoir/autobiography) was extremely helpful. In fact I’d have paid the cost of the book just to read those pages! How much of a danger is it to borrow narrative techniques from fiction?

The Arvon Book of Life Writing

Carole:  I think it’s essential to borrow narrative techniques from fiction, and Sally and I devote half the practical part of our book to discussing how to do it – how to introduce pace and suspense, rhythm and variation, imagery and symbolism; how to develop character, play with order, and yes, use dialogue, or substitutes for it – quotations from letters, diaries, emails, etc. Good biographical writing has never been dull, from Plutarch onwards; but it is more important than ever to make it vivid and engaging, for the reasons we’ve already mentioned.

The trouble is that biography must respect reality, and so cannot produce the effect of reality – l’effet du réel – as fiction can, by invention. You cannot say ‘It was an eerily calm day’ or ‘She held her breath in terror’ unless you have proof (a weather report; a diary or letter.) You must be objective, and you must respect the limits of knowledge; so you are stuck with the historian’s third-person narrative voice, you cannot enter your character’s minds at will, and you are often forced to speculate (‘She must have held her breath…’). All this means that dullness is the great risk, and the borrowing of fictional techniques a necessity – but at the same time it means that you can’t borrow them, beyond a certain point, or you’ll lose your reader’s trust. This is the danger you raise in your question, and you’re right to raise it. A racy paragraph that would be perfectly fine in a thriller (‘It was an eerily calm day. She held her breath in terror…’) will – or should! – make the biography- reader chuck the book in the bin. Even the careful use of a fictional technique can raise questions in the reader’s mind. How does the biographer know what her subject said to her lover in bed? How does the memoirist remember every word of a conversation she had 15 years ago?

In sum, biographers should use fictional techniques – but with care. What makes a good novel hard to write is that you have to invent, what makes a good biography hard to write is that you can’t. I know which I think is harder.

Q7.  Tell me some more about your teaching/mentoring roles at Arvon and on the Gold Dust mentoring scheme. What do you find rewarding? Are there any frustrations? What do new biographers tend to need most help with?

Carole:  I love the mentoring I do – especially in life writing, which I do at Arvon and on Gold Dust, as you say, but also at Birkbeck, where I’m a tutor on the Creative Writing MA. I also enjoy teaching academic writing, which I’m doing for the RLF again this year, after a long absence (at Oxford Brookes this time, which I’m really looking forward to.) It’s very demanding, and it uses a lot of the same energy you need for writing. But that’s always the dilemma in the creative trades – do you take a day job you enjoy, and that uses your skills, but may use them up; or do you take a completely different, boring job you hate, but that leaves your creative energy intact? For me at least, a boring job destroys my energy anyway, so there’s no contest. I love meeting young people, which I don’t do much in the ordinary way since my son left home; I love having colleagues, and a library card, and an institutional affiliation, which is a lot more respectable in the eyes of the world than writing. And not least I love working with good writers. The frustrations? – working with people who want to be writers, but don’t really want to write. That’s a recipe for disaster.

As to what new biographers need most help with – the same things old ones do. All the challenges Sally and I cover in our book, especially the main one I’ve already mentioned – combining accuracy and objectivity with elegance and excitement.

Fiona: Finally, let’s gaze into the crystal ball…

Q8. I remember a talk by Professor David Dutton, author of political biographies, where he raised the issue of the ephemeral nature of modern communication – texts, real time chat, emails – rather than letters. It’s interesting because in some ways we leave less ‘hard copy’ evidence of our lives, yet in other ways we leave a huge ‘digital trail’ of stuff through Facebook, Twitter and our blogs. I wonder, do you think Life Writing in the future will become easier or more difficult, or will the research methods just be different?

Carole: I’m sure they’ll just be different. But I’m glad I was around in the old days, when the problem was too little evidence, rather than too much, and when you could touch the paper someone wrote on, and see their handwriting. Biography is the art par excéllence of the human individual, but each advance in technology leaves less room for the individual.

Still, that started to happen when writing took over from oral memory, and when printing took over from pen and ink. It’s just me there won’t be room for in the future. I’m sure biography will be fine.

Fiona: Thank you Carole for generously sharing your insights into the practicalities of being a biographer.

All comments and questions welcome.

Fiona Joseph

Just in case you hadn’t heard I’m writing the life story of Beatrice Cadbury, which I guess makes me a biographer! So I was thrilled that one of my birthday pressies recently was ‘The Arvon Book of Life Writing: Writing Biography, Autobiography and Memoir’ by Sally Cline and Carole Angier. Sally and Carole are biographers and teach Life Writing at the Arvon Foundation, and boy do they know their stuff. The coverage of this book is fantastic, because as well as their own wonderful wisdom there are guest contributions from over thirty writers, agents, and publishers. If you’re looking for a state-of-the-art textbook on Life Writing this is the one. It’s published by A & C Black and you can get hold of a copy from their website or buy it from the Arvon Shop.

Now, as luck would have it, Carole Angier was the guest speaker at our recent National Academy of Writing end-of-year showcase. Carole gave an entertaining and inspiring talk about her own writing – she is best known for her biographies, ‘Jean Rhys: Life & Work’ and ‘The Double Bond: Primo Levi, A Biography’. I was so encouraged by what she had to say to new and emerging writers that I asked her if I could interview her for my blog. She very kindly said yes and had so much knowledge that I decided to split the interview into two parts.

INTERVIEW WITH CAROLE ANGIER: Part 1

Fiona: Congratulations Carole (and to your co-author Sally Cline) on the excellent ‘The Arvon Book of Life Writing’, and thank you for agreeing to let me interview you.

Q1. I have to ask this first. Traditional biography seems to be a hard sell in the current publishing climate, at least according to agent Andrew Lownie in his contribution to the book. Do you agree? How can biography evolve to keep and expand its audience? I rather liked his rallying cry for biographers, along with publishers, libraries, booksellers and arts organisations to “demonstrate the range and quality” of life writing today.

Carole Angier

Carole: Alas yes, it does seem true that traditional biography – single-subject, cradle-to-grave literary or historical biography, complete with scholarly apparatus – is one of the victims of the current climate, along with literary novels and other kinds of ‘high-end’ publishing. The truth is that they were always loss-leaders: a cultural feather in the cap for publishers, but rarely money earners, since only devotees of the subject (or even more rarely, of the biographer) would be interested enough to read them. And now feathers in caps are no longer affordable.

Also there are fashions in books, as in everything else. Serious biography has actually been fashionable for a long time, thanks to wonderful writers like Michael Holroyd, Richard Holmes, Hilary Spurling and others. They are all as good as ever, but after a while people just want a change. Biography was in from the 70s through to the 90s; in the Noughties the taste moved to memoir, where I think it still is.

On the other hand, as I say in our book, writing is not market research: writers must write what they want to write, or we’ll have sold our souls for a mess of pottage. In fact, as Andrew Lownie says, many excellent biographies are still being published, there are more festivals and prizes than ever before, and biography is still the first genre to be reviewed in newspapers and magazines. Writing is not for the faint-hearted; and if we allow ourselves to be discouraged, the death of biography will be a self-fulfilling prediction. So if it’s what you want to write, don’t be deterred.

As to how it can evolve: you’ll see from my answers below (eg to Question 6) that I am not a huge fan of innovation – or not a fan of huge innovation – in these matters. I’ve experimented myself, interweaving short quest chapters with the main biographical story in my Primo Levi; and no one admires the greatest modern innovator in non-fiction, W.G. Sebald, more than me. But Sebald was a genius; I’m not sure many of us will be able to follow him, any more than we could follow Shakespeare or Eliot. Biographies may get shorter (see Question 2), and there may be more group biographies, and/or quest biographies, than before.  But I do not think that biography can include a lot of invention – ie fiction – without breaking its contract with the reader. The trick is not to invent, and still write a gripping book. That’s how to keep our audience for biography.

Q2. Related to the above, on p 177 of the book you write “today the publishing world would rather have short biographies”. Is this to do with physical costs, or the belief that readers these days are time-poor, or perhaps both?

Carole:  Yes – long books cost more, and people don’t want to pay more than the usual tenner. And yes, it’s to do with the belief that people don’t have the time for long books any more, or the concentration; and probably that belief is right, at least for the majority. On the other hand, look at the Harry Potter novels, or His Dark Materials: these are whopping great books, but bought in their millions by children, the most ADHD-affected part of our nation. So it’s not just length, obviously. The problem with long biographies is not that they’re long, but that they’re biographies. That is: they don’t allow people to indulge in fantasy, but require respect for the facts, and also for their limitations – for the recognition that no biography can be the whole truth, and that there are lots of things we’ll never know. People don’t like to read a whole long book and still feel it’s only giving them a partial vision. A short partial vision is OK; which may be one answer to your question.

Andrew Lownie says something very true about this too. He says that “the market is not for worthy and well-crafted portraits, but for something more immediate and personal. It’s bite-sized, Wikipedia gossip that interests us more than a view of the whole life.” Again, short biographies, and maybe slice-of-life rather than whole-life biographies, seem to be what’s called for – not just by the state of publishing, but by the state of the national psyche, formed by the cult of celebrity and the 3-minute attention span. Again, too, writers should lead, not follow, and if a longer, more traditional biography is what you want to write – go for it. But know what you are up against.

Fiona: Can we talk now about some of the practicalities of being a biographer?

Q3. I’m fascinated that you chose to learn Italian for your biography of Primo Levi. (I’m facing my own language hurdle as my biographee, Beatrice Cadbury, was married to a Dutchman and lived in Holland in her later life!) How essential was this for you and how much time did this add to your research?

Carole:  Learning Italian was essential for me, because my subject was a writer, and I had to read him in the original. Also, he lived all his life in Italy (except for his one year in Auschwitz), and of all the hundreds of people I had to interview about him, only a handful spoke anything other than Italian.

Your case is completely different, fortunately! Beatrice Cadbury wasn’t a writer; she spent only her later life in Holland; and every Dutch person I’ve ever known speaks excellent English. So I think you’ll only need to read Dutch reasonably well, if there are Dutch books, letters, documents etc. about her. You’ll hardly need to learn to speak Dutch at all – which is good news, because I suspect it’s a lot harder than Italian. You could do what Hilary Spurling did for her (short!) biography of Pearl Buck: she learned enough Chinese to greet people politely, and take her leave politely, and that was it. (Unlike what she did with her school-girl French, for Matisse, which was to make it perfect.)

I spent a year doing nothing but reading Levi in the original, and doing Italian conversation once a week with a wonderful Professoressa who lived near me, in a village she called Grade Rorride (ie Great Rollright.) Of course when I got to Italy I was nowhere near ready to interview Levi’s friends, who were among the most distinguished intellectuals in Italy; but they were all extremely kind, and ignored my howlers. By the end of my two years there I spoke reasonable Italian – and then of course I came home.

I should add that Italian is truly possible to learn, especially if you did Latin at school, and already speak French, as I did. If Primo Levi had been Polish or Hungarian, I wouldn’t have dreamed of writing his biography.

Q4. Biographies have their own cost implications – time, travel, etc. The Arvon book includes a helpful list of funding organisations. Were you successful yourself in accessing any grants or external sources of funding, in addition to a publisher’s advance for example?

Carole:  Yes. Despite a generous advance, I had to, because the whole process took 8 years – 3 years of research, and 5 of writing. I had a Winston Churchill Traveling Fellowship for my first year in Italy, and an Arts Council grant for my first year of writing. For the other 4 years of writing I had a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship, which meant two days a week teaching academic writing at Warwick University. These were all life-savers; but especially the RLF Fellowship, for which I was, and am, extremely grateful. The RLF educational fellowships help many established writers to stay afloat while they write; which is never easy, especially in research-intensive life writing.

I’ll be posting the second part of this interview next week. In the meantime if you have any questions or comments then it’d be great to hear from you.

Fiona Joseph

This is one of those baffling questions my youngest daughter asked me the other day on the way home from school. As a parent you get used to a bombardment of seemingly random questions, like ‘What’s the opposite of sky?’ or ‘Why does the alphabet always have to be in alphabetical order?’

Anyway it turned out she was talking about the way maths groups are organised at school. For literacy it’s colour groups (blue, green, white, etc) but for maths they’re either in the Adds or the Takeaways.

Do the Takeaways rule?

But the question got me thinking about an aspect of the writing process that has been on my mind recently. So many writers around me seem to be in the Takeaways when it comes to revising their drafts. You might hear, Oh I had 200,000 words to start with and had to lose half of them. And y’know what? Secretly I’m thinking, blimey, if I cut 50% of my drafts I’d be left with hardly anything at all to work with! It’s funny how most writerly advice is based on the assumption we have an excess of material, an extra layer of fat that needs trimming, as we work towards that final draft. Cut back 10%. Cut the first three chapters. Cut, cut, cut!

But what about if you have the problem not of too many words but too few? In that case please come and join my gang, the Adds. My early drafts never reach the target word length – I’m always adding, adding, adding until I get there. I’m cool with this M.O. most of the time but you know how the occasional doubt creeps in – that little voice that says perhaps you’re not doing it right?

So you can imagine how thankful I was to read a blog post recently by the lovely Erika Robuck, who’s a writer of historical fiction I ‘met’ through Twitter. Here she writes about using the analogy of the body when she’s writing and revising. I found these words in particular very reassuring:

With this draft I have a skeleton with some tendons.  Maybe I have an eyeball or thin layer of muscle at various places, but no more.  With each revision or critique another layer gets added until finally, there’s a whole body.

Yes, I thought. This is exactly how it works for me too, Erika. Perhaps there are more of us in the Adds after all.

So, in a quick and very unscientific attempt to test my theory that the Takeaways are in the majority, here’s my question. Do you belong to the Adds or the Takeaways?

Fiona Joseph

Like all good control freaks I love order, and creating processes and systems. (The first time I met Excel, for example, I knew we’d be a match made in heaven.) But I must admit there are times when I’m researching on t’internet that I come across stuff that’s potentially interesting for my writing, but I don’t have a pressing need for it right there and then. So, what to do? Copy the link into a Word file or a spreadsheet? Print off the page and file a hard copy? Make it a favourite or a desktop shortcut? It seems like a big processing decision to make for something that I don’t actually want to deal with until later.

I want one of those

It’s at times like this that I wish I was Barbara Windsor in the 1960s film Carry on Spying. Not for her magnificent bosom (well maybe) but because her character, Daphne Honeybutt, had another great asset: a photographic memory. With just one blink of her heavily mascara’d eyelashes she could commit huge documents to memory.

Wouldn’t it be cool if your brain could take a snapshot of your computer screen? And while I’m wishing, it would be even more fabulous if someone invented a USB cable that could download the information from our brains straight to our PC.

Hey, I’ll use Evernote instead

The inventors of Evernote must have been spying on me, because this is one of those thoughtful web-based tools that feels like it was invented just to meet my needs.

Evernote lets you ‘clip’ web pages, notes, files and images and store them in your online account, which you can create for free. You need to install Evernote on your computer and make sure the Evernote icon appears in the toolbar. Then, whenever you see something you want to save, you just clip it to Evernote. This is great as a way for writers to organise all those interesting web pages in a single place and then review their potential at a later date.

To see how it works watch this video:

Evernote is being developed all the time and there’s other whizzy stuff you can do with your smartphone. Me, I’m happy clipping pages from the web for now and pretending to be Babs.

Have you used Evernote? It’d be good to know whether or not you find it as useful as I do. Are there any alternative web tools out there? How do you keep track of your online research? Let me know.

Fiona Joseph

One of the bonuses of studying Creative Writing at university – aside from the intellectual rigour and support of the academic environment – is the number of ‘professional activities’ that students can engage in. A quick glance at some of the MA courses in the UK shows there are plenty of practical and vocational opportunities that go beyond a dedication to the craft of writing. The most common ones include:

• editing an anthology of student work
• readings and public presentation of work (e.g. festivals, book launches, open mic events)
• collaborating with experts in other media, like video producers or illustrators
• teaching and mentoring young writers

I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much advantage I’ve taken of all the opportunities on offer on my Graduate Diploma course at BCU. Along with fellow students I’ve done public readings galore (including the Birmingham Book Festival, End of Year shows, and Anthology launch events) and had the chance to run workshops and teach Creative Writing sessions in schools. I’ve loved it all, even if I do sometimes feel as if I’ve got my hand permanently in the sweetie jar.

Why get involved?

For me, they’re a chance to collaborate with friends who share your passion and an opportunity to notch up professional credits on your Writer’s CV. Also, these activities can build a curious kind of momentum and lead to other engagements – invitations to teach, to speak publicly, writing commissions and so on.

But best of all it’s fun. You get to play at being a writer, doing trial runs of the stuff that real writers do.

When I was a little girl my mum kept a pair of gold shoes under her bed. They were her special ‘dancing shoes’. And my greatest treat was to be allowed to try them on, wobbling precariously as I strutted around the bedroom in them, with a silk scarf draped over my shoulders for added sophistication. And that’s how doing these professional activities makes me feel sometimes – like trying to walk in grown-up shoes, practising for becoming a proper writer.

Staying faithful

The danger of course is turning into a person who doesn’t put writing first. While these professional activities are great to do, you (I) need to beware of them becoming a gigantic displacement activity.  The question (and I guess it applies to writers at any stage of their career) is how to do the professional stuff while still maintaining fidelity to the writing.  Because there are always temptations to pull us away from the desk and the sheer hard graft of getting the writing down.

As I approach the final stage of my Diploma course it’s time to take a deep breath and to ask of every new professional opportunity that comes my way, ‘how do you serve my writing?’ It sounds ruthless but it isn’t really. It’s about honouring my commitment to the thing that I love. And yes – occasionally staying away from the sweetie jar.

If you’re on a university writing course what sorts of professional opportunities have you been able to do? How do you balance the skills learned and the experience gained against the loss of writing time? If you’re an established writer how do you manage the ‘writerly’ stuff? It’d be good to know!

Fiona Joseph

Oh no, not the N-word…

Do I have to join in?

Book launches, industry events, writers’ conferences and festivals. There are all sorts of opportunities for the emerging writer to engage in that most dreaded of marketing activities. Yes, networking. In an ideal world all writers would be allowed to stay on the sidelines, doing that writerly thing of observing, analysing, noting down all the fascinating quirks of people behaviour. OMG, she’s stuffing the prawn vol au vents into her handbag! If only.

Can’t I just stay home instead?

Plant a little seed...

No, and I’ll tell you why. You know those packets of mixed seeds you can buy for cultivating a wild flower patch? The idea is you sprinkle them on the soil and in a few months you have a riot of beautiful varieties of poppies, marigolds, love-in-a-mist. Networking is like chucking a handful of seeds into the earth. You never quite know what seeds are going to make it, or when, but you can bet if you’ve sown enough seeds then some amazing opportunities will spring up, almost magically.

If like me you’re an introvert by nature – as many writers are – then don’t let those feelings of terror and timidness put you off networking events. Believe me, shyness is fine. In fact shyness seems endearingly sweet and quite cute compared to some of the behaviour I’ve encountered at networking occasions over the years.

My top 4 networking turn-offs

#1 Rudeness By this I mean those people who always look slightly past the side of your head when they’re talking to you, as though there might be someone of far greater interest/importance/influence on the other side of the room.

#2 Drunkeness and other immaturity Call me a control freak who likes to be in control of her faculties, but just because the wine is free doesn’t mean you have to get blind drunk. I was at an awards ceremony once where an industry colleague lurched towards me in a very drunken state and (accidentally I believe) tipped his glass of red wine all down my blouse. And then tried to dab at the stain with a napkin! Cool, huh?

#3 Insensitivity to the body language of groups. It’s usually obvious when pairs or groups of people are deep in conversation and don’t want to be interrupted. All the non-verbal clues are there: the speakers will be facing each other and forming a exclusively tight or ‘closed’ group, unlike an ‘open’ group where the speakers are standing side-by-side, facing slightly outwards. The open group is more amenable to being approached; the closed group will be severely irritated if anyone gatecrashes their private conversation, believe me. [For more reading on how to identify different groups then check out Andy Bounds' brilliant business communication book, The Jelly Effect.]

#4 General crassness/trying too hard. What’s really toe-curling is when complete strangers are clearly in sales mode. You’ve barely said hello when they’ve launched into the 10-second pitch of their book. Actually I’ve just come to enjoy myself, so show me you’re a human being not a robot. Tempt me first with some general conversation, crack a joke, even flirt a little. (Maybe scrub that last point but just, you know, chill out a bit.) And chances are I’ll be very interested to hear about your book.

Having read all that, aren’t you glad it’s only shyness you have to worry about?

What about you? Do you love networking events? Or are they your idea of hell? What have been your best, worst or funniest experiences? I’m dying to know.

Fiona Joseph

The other day I came across an article in the winter edition of The Author, the trade journal for members of the Society of Authors. As always, their magazine is full of useful stuff for writers, but one particular feature stood out, and it’s been niggling away at me ever since.

Bonnie Greer

In the article, ‘Something of the Night’, the multi-talented writer and critic Bonnie Greer writes about her realisation that there are two kinds of books: ‘day’ books and ‘night’ books. (Greer is a playwright, novelist, writer of memoir and poetry, as well as a regular panelist on BBC2’s Newsnight Review, where you can bet she always has something interesting and relevant to say.)

‘Day’ or ‘Night’ writing – what’s the difference?

Okay, let me clarify that the terms ‘day’ and ‘night’ have nothing to do with the time of day that you do most of your writing. It matters not whether you’re a night-owl writer, or if you’re up with the lark, or (like me) a bit of a ‘grabber-inbetween’ of any scribbling opportunity, day or night.

Rather, the mark of a ‘night’ book, Greer argues, is that it’s driven by a ‘daemon’, or at the very least a form of interiority where:

“…the reader is a kind of intruder. This isn’t to say that the reader is ignored, not wanted, discouraged; just that there is something private happening, something that the reader herself cannot understand and is learning … as she writes.” p134

I liked this. It made sense instantly. To illustrate her point, Greer compares Oscar Wilde’s children’s stories (his ‘day’ books) with The Picture of Dorian Grey (the ‘night’ book). And Robert Louis Stephenson’s Treasure Island (his ‘day’ book) with Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, (a ‘night’ book if ever there was one).

I get your drift Ms Greer

day or night?

In my own mind, I see ‘day’ books as safer, more commercial, written to please readers. They’re good little children – they sit still in church, eat their greens without a fuss. People love them because they do what’s expected.

Whereas ‘night’ books are bolder, liable to controversy, less controllable. They dig their heels in, refuse to get up off the supermarket floor. Other people look on with disdain. But you love them just as much, in spite of the runaround they give you. And maybe that makes the personal rewards of writing the ‘night’ book so much sweeter.

I’m not sure yet. I’m still thinking about it. Maybe the trick is to do both kinds of writing, like the versatile Ms. Greer.

So how about you? How far does this distinction between ‘day’ and ‘night’ books make sense for you as a writer? I’d love to hear your thoughts on your past and present writing projects.

Fiona Joseph

When I heard earlier this year about a forthcoming book from Salt Publishing on the short story I was so excited, not to mention a bit impatient for its publication! My copy of ‘Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story’ arrived last month and, honestly, the wait was well worth it. It’s absolutely chock full of advice from 24 prize-winning short fiction writers on just about every aspect of the short story. And it’s an ideal textbook for those of us on postgraduate Creative Writing courses who love – and grapple with – this challenging form.

So I’m delighted that the editor of Short Circuit, the acclaimed Vanessa Gebbie, agreed to let me interview her as part of her Virtual Book Tour. Vanessa has won many awards for her own short stories, and her collection Words from a Glass Bubble is one of Salt’s Top 20 bestsellers. She also has a fabulously informative blog, and is a smart, warm-hearted person who’s very generous when it comes to sharing her expertise.

INTERVIEW WITH VANESSA GEBBIE

Fiona: Hi Vanessa. Thanks so much for coming! First, let’s kick off with some questions about Short Circuit.

Q1. On my postgraduate course the students have the opportunity to produce an anthology [of students' work]. Can you tell me about your experience of putting together Short Circuit? What were the highs and lows? In what ways has this editorial role contributed to your own professional development as a writer?

Vanessa: First, congratulations on a great opportunity.  The chance to plan, decide how to select – named or anonymous submissions for example -  single editor final decision or committee final decision (remembering a camel was a horse designed by committee…), then  to work closely with the writers on editing, and introductions, acknowledgements, designing the book, working with the printers, planning marketing, readings, distribution. (I’ll review for you on the blog). All fantastic experiences.

Secondly, commiserations for the headaches to come. How to reject the work of friends? How to disappoint people. How to react to the deadlines being broken by factors outside your control…etc etc.

Short Circuit had some similarities, some obvious differences. I approached the writers and commissioned essays. I was lucky, only one of those writers turned me down. I wanted each writer to ‘talk’ to the reader in their own way – therefore there was no standardising of style at all. My input was easy – wait until I saw what I had, and fill the gap. Sort a few writing exercises.

The lowest point was the final editing process. I had not realised to what extent there was going to be a need to check and doublecheck and treblecheck formatting of the whole book as an entity, once all 24 essays had been typeset by Salt, to standardise that (or it would have looked a dog’s dinner!). That is a non-creative occupation, and was unsatisfying on many levels. Aaagh. All those lists of stories and reference books… I had to either re-check every single one for publisher, dates, anthology titles… or in many cases find all that out as well. Hours, and hours!

But – when it was done, that was a real high. Seeing the book – amazing. Actually, seeing the cover was the first real amazement – how clever Chris at Salt is – tuning in to the work so well to find an image that sings the contents.

Highs during the process were the great conversations I had with both Tobias Hill and with Clare Wigfall. Hours on the phone, scribbling notes. And then, as the essays arrived in my inbox, reading for the first time, reading them as a writer picking up this book – and being blown sideways each time.

Q2. One of the features of Short Circuit is that each of the 24 contributors provides a list of their favourite short stories. I noticed that one of your choices was from Petina Gappah’s An Elegy for Easterly collection, which has just won the Guardian First Book award. (You clearly have good instincts!) What, for you, are the stand-out qualities of her story, ‘Midnight at the Hotel California’?

V: It is hard to make a list of favourite stories! There are so many – ask me tomorrow and they’d be different to today. But Gappah’s work struck me as so good, when I first met it. (We worked together online for a short while, pulling together the One World Anthology). I’m delighted to have picked a winner!

For me, a great story is not only well written, engaging, superbly crafted.  But it has to give me something that feeds me as a person. And her work does all that. What do I know about the world of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe? Only what I am fed by the media – and we all know how skewed that is in the UK. I enjoy the way she does not do the obvious. Each story is surprising in some way.

I loved the title of that story. It is a perfect illustration of a title that jangles and resonates and begins to ‘lead me’ before I even start reading.

I love the flashes of humour. And the way those twist about so that once you have laughed, you realise that you are laughing at something fundamentally unfunny – it makes you ‘see’ differently, understand a little about how Zimbabwe has become an unknown for the majority of us in our comfy sitting rooms, an unknown we think we know, but we don’t.

It is a layered story –  interesting, clever, beautifully written, and funny. And it makes you think…

Q3. Alison Macleod’s essay ‘Writing and Risk-taking’ resonated strongly with me. You seem to me to be a bold writer, Vanessa! I wonder though, have you ever shied away from writing about particular issues, topics, or characters for fear of other people’s judgements (especially family members, friends)?

V: I will never forget her reading from that chapter at the ‘official’ launch of the book, at the National Association of Writers in Education annual conference, a few weeks ago. She read the section of her chapter beginning with the bathtub…(!). If there is any single piece in the book that encapsulates what makes Short Circuit utterly different, it is those extraordinary paragraphs.

It was risky for Alison to write those, really. She is a professor, after all, and it doesn’t chime with one’s image of dry academia, does it (excuse the bathtime pun there!)? But she was illustrating the need to go somewhere ‘unsafe’ in your writing if you want it to engage, resonate. To take risks if you want to take the reader along, holding their breath a wee bit. And she was illustrating it exactly. Perfectly, in her essay.

Am I a bold writer? Thank you! I’d hate to be described as tame and sugary.

Your question is, have I ever shied away from writing about something, an issue, topic, character – for fear of the judgements of others. And you specify family or friends. I’m lucky – my husband does not read fiction. His reactions to mine are therefore, on one level, meaningless.  And I would never give him my work to see before it had been published.

I think (I’ll qualify that in a minute) that the answer is no. I ‘think’ I write what I write because I just do – and if the reader doesn’t like it, they don’t have to go on reading.

A lovely example is ‘Irrigation’ – my story told by Shelley, a young woman in a high-rise block, while she is having a colonic irrigation. The story is ‘about’ love, how we have no control over who we love. And it’s about memory, and loss, and how we try to get rid of uncomfortable bad memories…and I don’t write many sex scenes, but there is a graphic scene described by her at one point. And it just happens to be anal sex. Rather nasty, that scene, unpleasant for her, and I was really ‘feeling’ for her as I wrote it.

The whole story could be a bit off-putting if you are a bit squeamish anyway – what with the colonic irrigation going on throughout. And that scene adds something else.

Three things to say, really. First, it was picked as one of the best stories in the book by a very good writer, who also picked the collection as one of her book choices of 2008 –(thanks, Nuala ni Chonchuir). Second, my son tells me some Year 10s have read it at his school and their parents didn’t like it. (He finds it excruciating that his Mum writes that!) Third, I gave a reading of ‘Irrigation’ in London, in a bookshop. A woman in the front row coughed loudly, pulled a book off the shelf nearest her, and proceeded to read it instead of listening, right through the story, rustling the pages.  (Didn’t bother me – it was her right not to like it.)

I think I’m saying this – You have no control over a reader’s reaction. If you worried how people were going to react to everything you wrote, you’d never write a thing.

Q4. In your own essay about short story competitions you say on p.228 that you have a ritual of apologising to the story that failed to get placed and then you read through the rejected work, see what needs to be reworked and send it out again. Is this persistent mindset a factor in keeping faith in yourself as a writer? Do you have other ways to stay positive in the face of rejection?

V: It’s called bloodymindedness, stubbornness. Knowing I could do it well if I tried, and didn’t do it as well as I could. And NOT giving up after a couple of knock backs. If you are going to let failure get you down, you’re in the wrong game.  You carry on and get better! Otherwise, nope, you’re right. You aren’t a writer. You are playing at it, and are really a bank clerk. Or a roadsweeper. A nurse. Or a policeman. Anything – except a writer.

Writing comps are not a precise science, far from it, but there are ways to maximise your chances to get noticed among a pile of a few hundred pieces. And the most obvious is to write very very well.  To create a story that makes the reader forget they are reading. (I go on a bit about that, sorry -) That’s just craft – if they are reading properly. Not magic. And you can get better at craft. That’s what Short Circuit is all about.   But also, it’s about learning to ‘see’ as a writer. See the potential in things. Adam Marek’s chapter… on originality. Did you like that??!

Q5. I laughed at one of Paul Magrs’ observations on p.205, ‘Adverbs can be great. Mostly they’re shit.’ How far do you agree with this (and other stock advice for writers, like ‘Show Don’t Tell’)?

V: Well, Vanessa typed, noisily, her head full of thoughts whizzing whizzily round her skull. Then she felt dryly thirsty, so ran quickly down the stairs, jumping bouncily from step to step, her hair flying whispily behind her.

Darlingest, her husband wheedled, persuadingly – from the bedroom.

What, Vanessa shouted loudly, pausing momentarily on the stairs.

Hmph.  I think the point is (piss-taking aside) that many poor writers use adverbs to reinforce what they’ve already said. How can you shout anything but loudly? How can you wheedle anything but persuadingly? How can thoughts whiz anything but whizzily. And to ‘pause momentarily’ is the biggest daftest cliché. If a pause is NOT momentary, you have ‘stopped’. Not paused at all. See? Take ‘em out and the prose (if not the story -) is sharper.  But sure, any ‘rule’ has to be questioned. Paul is setting you up to think, to challenge, to prove him wrong. But to do it intelligently, and with thought. Of course adverbs are OK, IF that is the right construct, and what you are saying can’t be said a better way. As with all words, actually!

‘Show don’t tell?’ Oh god. Was there ever a dreadful saying??? You will notice that I do not have a chapter on showing not telling. We all tell stories. That’s what we do. But we do it in a way that engages the reader, a way that entices the reader to join us in a ‘dream’. We don’t hold them at arm’s length while we batter them with facts. We link arms and walk together. Or better – we go on ahead and prepare the path – and the reader walks it, unsure of where they are going, but willingly because we make it impossible not to.  However. IF we put up bright red signposts every few yards – ‘Here be emotional scene, here be guilt, here be impending divorce, here be sadness, here be temptations,’ we are taking the whole joy out of the journey. Why bother?

F: Finally, while I have you in the hot seat Vanessa, can I ask a couple of general questions about short story writing in general.

V: Of course, I’ll try to be clever…

Q6. There have been various propositions for short story categories, such as those by William Boyd. Do you find such categories helpful? Do you consciously write stories for a particular category? How easy have you found it to place your own work within a literary tradition? Does this even matter?

V: You are asking the wrong person. I just make the words, the stories, the scenes, the characters. It is for others to fit them into boxes. If I do that, if I look too closely at available boxes, I will start trying to fit the work to the box, and something would die.

On the other hand, when teaching, the categories might be useful. To open the eyes of the non-believer to the possibilities, perhaps! And when playing. Stretching. Trying new things. ‘Oh – I could do that!!!’ but I will never be a commercial writer, I don’t think – no one will give me a three book deal for a series, because I couldn’t write to order. Bother! The money would be great…

Q7. Beginner writers may consciously – or subconsciously – mimic the voice of their heroes, like Chekhov, Carver or Proulx, for example. What are the dangers in this and could you suggest an exercise to help writers explore and discover their own narrative voice?

V: Yes – mimicking is so easy to do. But in the end, that’s not good. Your work has to be based on firmer ground than that. Let voices feed you, by all means, but find your own voice and style. Or you’ll only get so far… or you’ll be writing fan fiction for the rest of your life.

On the other hand, I don’t think you should get too worried about letting strong voices inform what you do yourself. So long as that’s all it, is, informing, not becoming!

I think quite honestly, the only way to find you own voice, is exactly the same way you lean to speak. By taking it slowly, and practicing. Making mistakes. Reading as much as you can, and writing constantly.  Someone came up with some clever number of words the beginner writer has to write in order to get anywhere near Ok… millions! I don’t know about that, I do know that you get closer to your own way of doing things the more you actually DO it…!

F: Thank you Vanessa. It’s been great to have you on the blog. Hearing your thoughts has been a real inspiration. Good luck with the rest of the Short Circuit Blog Tour!

All comments welcome.

Fiona Joseph

Don't forget the icing sugar...

So, you’re an emerging writer and it’s time you launched yourself into cyberspace? That’s great. I’m going to share with you some steps to getting started with a simple website that you can build yourself on a modest non-existent budget. Just one thing though, and sorry to be a nag, but you did do your homework from last time, didn’t you? If so, you can have a virtual pat on the back and a seasonal mince pie for your efforts. If you’re new to this site then I’d advise you to go through the checklist in Part 1 and decide which of the success ingredients you’re going to need to put together in your website. Trust me, it’ll make the process much easier in the long run.

First steps

1. Decide what you want your website to be called, i.e. your domain name. Many new writers keep it simple with something like www.firstnamelastname.com. If you have a specific product or project to promote then you can also (or instead) register the domain name for that, like www.noveltitle.com.
2. Now check whether your choice of domain name is available. To do this you need to go to one of the domain names registers, here, for example. If you can’t get .com or .co.uk (for UK writers) then check out other suffixes like .org,  .info,  .net, and .org.uk. However, they start getting a bit bizarre after a while, like uk.com, .tel or .biz!
3. Then you need a hosting company, aka an Internet Service Provider (ISP), to give you webspace and host your website. There are zillions of companies out there that offer web hosting services, and usually include the registration of your domain name. For this website I used eukhosts as it’s relatively cheap (less than a hundred pounds for two years hosting), and I’ve had great customer service from them.
4. Another decision you need to make is whether you’ll be making very regular updates, like news, features or articles, and inviting comments from your readers – in which case you need the functionality of a blog -  or whether you’re happy to start with fairly static pages without much interaction.

Yes, but how do I actually build a website?

Back in ye olde days of the internet you needed some knowledge of html or would’ve had to hire a web designer. But now there are some amazingly easy-to-use software systems that require very little technical expertise.

Option 1. You can download free and paid-for website templates, which you then fill with your own words. Open Source Web Design has a vast collection of templates on offer, although you may need a bit of hand-holding from someone who’s tech savvy. By the way, your hosting company may also offer a free website builder.

Option 2. Probably a better alternative is what I call a ‘blog-style’ system. These were originally designed for people who wanted to keep blogs but they’ve become really popular and are almost the default option for those starting a website for the first time.
The two most popular ones are Blogger and Wordpress (the latter of which I used to build this site). Others include Squarespace and the free Weebly, both of which are very simple for the non-techie person to use. With these you can add all types of content, i.e. text, images, audio, video, and update the content easily and within a specific template.

N.B. You can create a basic blog right away for free, but unless you choose a paid-for option that includes your own domain (and web hosting) then your website will be www.firstnamelastname.blogger.com or www.firstnamelastname.wordpress.com.
Me? I prefer to pay the extra to have my own domain name, as I think it looks more professional, but it depends on your budget.

Next time I visit this topic I’ll be talking about design, and getting the right look for your website. In the meantime if you have any questions or comments please post them below. I’d also love to hear from new/emerging writers who already have a website. How easy/hard did you find it to get yourself online?

Fiona Joseph

In a recent post I wrote about the relationship between creativity and productivity, niftily summed up by my formula, the more you write the more you write. But what happens when the well of creativity suddenly dries up? How much sympathy can you expect from writing professionals? Not much as it happens.

Writer’s block – yeah, right

Q: How do you spell writer’s block? A: C-H-I-C-K-E-N.

Novelist and tutor James N. Frey takes a very hard line with people whinging about their writer’s block. He calls blocked writers “the Saint Sebastians of the writing profession”. And that’s just for starters. Imagine, he says, the bricklayer claiming a spot of the old Bricklayer’s Block. Laughable. No, at bottom, writer’s block is an extreme form of cowardice mixed with arrogance, where the writer is paralysed by his own high standards, and yet demands sympathy for this poor affliction that he’s suffering from. Strong words indeed.

Similarly, I recently heard another writer on the radio – didn’t catch his name, dammit – debunking the ‘myth’ of writer’s block. The only thing that stops you writing, he says, is broken fingers.

This unforgiving position can be pretty seductive. Deep down I have an admiration for the straight talking, tell-it-how-it-is kind of person, like Suralun – sorry, Lord Sugar – or Supernanny. That’s because I recognise their message for what it is: a form of tough love. The Freys, Sugars and Frosts of this world are saying it for our own good. Just like my dad and his brand of no-nonsense Caribbean wisdom. You can’t hear, you’ll soon feel!

Before you know it you’re joining in with the big guys. Writer’s block? That’s just for wimps. It’ll never happen to me.

Never say never

A cautionary tale

Call me superstitious, but you don’t want to tempt fate by bragging either, because you never know what’s lurking round the corner.

Fans of Enid Blyton may remember how Alicia in ‘Upper Fourth at Malory Towers’ got her comeuppance. Alicia was the sharp-tongued, clever girl with zero tolerance for dimwits. But on the day of her School Cert exam – which she’s expecting to ace – a dreadful thing happens. She opens up the paper but can’t concentrate; her brain has suddenly turned woolly! Only after she collapses in a faint and is carried off by Matron is a diagnosis of measles made. Thankfully, her loss of brainpower was only temporary, but the moral is not to take your gifts for granted because one day you might lose them.

Or, to quote another of my dear dad’s sayings, when chickens merry, hawks dem near.

What’s your view on writer’s block? Tough or sympathetic? I’d love to hear from new and more experienced writers.

Fiona Joseph